Article on No Hell. Too bad the writer has no clue of what he spealks of. He says Rob Bell does not beleive that Jesus is the only way(Bell does believe Jesus is the only way).Bell does not spell out his beliefs well. He's sort of like Plato on steroids. Asks to many questions and does not provide enough background info.

His beliefs in a nut shell: There are hundreds of verses that say that all people go to heaven and a similar number that say non-believers go to hell. Orthox Evangelical church only looks at the hell verses as othodox and expalins away the ones that say all people go to heaven.

Question: How can people gop to hell and still go to heaven?

Answer: The ancients did not believe in eternity. They belived in ages. Jesus was the Alpha and Omega. The begining and the end. Since begining and end are a statement of time, Jesus is the bigining of time and the end of time. When he created the world he is the Alpha, time started. When the world end he is the Omega, time ends. When time ends he hands the kingdom to his father. And God will be All in All. There will be a new Earth and heaven(Bible says nothing about a new Hell). Hell will give up it's dead and all will be reconciled to God.

NIV

Quote:

20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23 But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. 24 Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For he “has put everything under his feet.”a Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. 28 When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

"Just as by executing various pious activities one achieves different positions in heavenly life, by acting impiously one achieves different positions in hellish life. Those who are activated by the material mode of ignorance engage in impious activities, and according to the extent of their ignorance, they are placed in different grades of hellish life. If one acts in the mode of ignorance because of madness, his resulting misery is the least severe. One who acts impiously but knows the distinction between pious and impious activities is placed in a hell of intermediate severity. And for one who acts impiously and ignorantly because of atheism, the resultant hellish life is the worst. Because of ignorance, every living entity has been carried by various desires into thousands of different hellish planets since time immemorial. I shall try to describe them as far as possible." [Srimad Bhagavatam 5.26.3]

There IS a hell and it serves a function - just like a state jailhouse...God no more wants people to go to hell than the state wants people to go to prison.

"Those who are demoniac do not know what is to be done and what is not to be done. Neither cleanliness nor proper behavior nor truth is found in them." [Bhagavad Gita 16.7]

"Self-complacent and always impudent, deluded by wealth and false prestige, they sometimes perform sacrifices in name only without following any rules or regulations." [Bhagavad Gita 16.17]

"And those penances and austerities which are performed foolishly by means of obstinant self-torture, or to destroy or injure others, are said to be in the mode of ignorance." [Bhagavad Gita 17.19]

We can figure it out from those texts...

Here is a message to certain critics - who may be thinking badly about my recent return to the Hindu/Vedic path:

I have studied the issue quite substantially from a Christian point of view and there are so many inconstitencies in the view of hell it boggles the mind.

In the original King James there is something like 50-60 references to hell. In the NIV there are 22. Hell is actually an old English word and used to mean the grave.
There are 4 main words translated hell in the Bible. They all mean different things.

Jesus when he talked of hell talked of a place called Gehenna. He said watch that your body is not thrown into Gehenna where the fires burn forever.

He could have been speaking of Gehenna as the garbage dump on the outskirts of Jerusalem where fires where always kept burning to burn the garbage of the city.This garbage dump got it's name from the Lake of fire of early Jewish belief. He talked of a great calamity that would befall the people of Jerusalem(his audience) that would occur shortly. This prophecy was fulfilled when the bodies of 250,000 Jews where burnt in the valley of Gehenna in the great Jewish revoly 67-70 A.D. which culminated in the destruction of the Temple.

The people who heard him speak at the time probably thought he was talking about the Spiritual Gehenna. His words where prophetic and fulfilled in the physical Gehenna.

Reading the Bible in context with the times it was written opens so much understanding.

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